Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions for internet traffic in the world, with South Africa at the heart of the data explosion.
Mobile data in South Africa grew 490 per cent year-on-year from the point it was introduced in 2007 to 2010.
The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2012-2017) projected that South Africa’s internet protocol (IP) traffic will quadruple between 2012 and 2017.
Despite this phenomenal rate of growth in both fixed and mobile data, the amount of spectrum allocated to mobile service providers is amongst the lowest on the planet.
Some African nations are allocating as little as 80MHz, with many in countries such as South Africa getting between 200MHz and 300Mhz. Compare this to Europe, where nations are aiming to allocate 1000MHz and it becomes apparent that the rate of growth will quickly outstrip the capabilities of the mobile networks.
Statistics extrapolated from a GSMA report suggested that releasing further spectrum and refarming existing spectrum could have a significant boost on GDP, employment, the number of connections and the quality of service.
Even then, wide-scale rollout of additional capabilities will be costly and time consuming, leaving the current infrastructure to carry the burden of increasing demands for some time to come.
The Wi-Fi offload solution
Given the situation, South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa at large are ideal candidates for Wi-Fi offload technologies.
Cisco estimated that South African service providers would have to invest US $108 million between 2013 and 2017 in order to provide coverage to busy areas in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Germiston, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, East London and Bloemfontein; 20 per cent of which would be allocated to CapEx and 80 per cent to OpEx.
While this investment is significant, it pales in comparison to the investment that would be required to build HSPA and LTE networks. Cisco estimated that without Wi-Fi offload, MSPs would have to invest in the region of $3.55 billion by 2017 in order to meet demands.
By offloading 30 per cent of overall mobile traffic, it was estimated that MSPs would be able to save in the region of $972 million within five years.
Government
The South African government is taking the benefits of universal connectivity very seriously. The Department of Communications, in partnership with the ICT industry, has a mandate to deliver 100 per cent broadband penetration by 2020. If this objective is realised, the government will have laid the ideal groundwork for offload strategies to be widely deployed.
Despite the best of intentions, the current penetration rates of fixed broadband remain dismally low in South Africa. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently released figures on broadband penetration and South Africa ranked at the bottom of all participating states. As of December 2012, the country had 827,091 fixed broadband subscribers (ADSL), which equates to a penetration rate of 1.7 per cent.
Even when factoring South Africa’s GDP, which is low relative to many of the high penetration states, the country was still at the bottom of the list.
These figures are significant when looking at the future of Wi-Fi offload because, increasingly, the possibility of MSPs forming partnerships with crowdsourced Wi-Fi networks, which piggyback on home broadband connections, is becoming a reality.
A bright future
Looking at the state of mobile data, Wi-Fi offload and universal connectivity in South Africa, there are both positives and negatives that can be taken away from the current landscape. The impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for mobile data connectivity shows an unyielding thirst for internet access. One way or the other, the authorities and mobile service providers will need to find a way to quench that thirst.
In all likelihood, the answer will be multifaceted; by both expanding the mobile spectrum available and deploying large scale Wi-Fi offload infrastructure, South Africa can looking forward to an ‘always on, always connected’ future.
